REMARKABLY, and much to his surprise and delight, the juggernaut of old age didn’t really catch up with Jerry Ford until he was nearly ninety.
“Some people age a lot in a uniform manner,” Ford mentioned to an old friend in 2003, not long before becoming a nonagenarian. “Hell, I didn’t age until three years ago. I like the way it was for me.”
He’d remained physically vigorous well into his eighties, mainly because of a twice-a-day routine of swimming laps that he maintained religiously. He seemed to recover fully from his stroke at the 2000 Republican convention, but later admitted to friends that his energy had sagged and was never quite the same afterward.
Part of it was his therapy: he needed to take blood thinners because of the stroke, but sometimes the medication caused bleeding around the esophagus and caused erratic fluctuations in his blood pressure that caused brief bouts of dizziness.
He’d always seemed indestructible to me; whenever he’d say something about finally getting old, I’d remind him I’d been saying for years he’d outlive us all.
Nonetheless, I can remember clearly the day his mortality came crashing home to me.
It was June 3, 2002, at the conclusion of one of the annual reunion dinners for old acquaintances the Fords loved to host every summer back in Washington.
As Melanie and I exited the dining room, someone grabbed my arm. It was the former president.
“Tom, you haven’t been out to see us for a while,” he admonished. “You should come out.”
I stammered my apologies, offering the usual Washington copouts: things are crazy at the office, busier than I expected, editors driving me insane, it’s an election year, et cetera, ad nauseam.
“But I will, Mr. President. I’ll do better; I promise.”
“Okay, but you’re overdue. Wait till we get to the mountains.”
I didn’t have the heart to remind him that we had spent ninety minutes together in Rancho Mirage only ten weeks earlier.
My wife grasped my arm and winced empathetically. She had been through this with her father before his death at eighty-nine, but Ford’s memory lapse, not uncommon in people his age, shocked me. In the winter of 1999, during our Beaver Creek conversation, I’d noticed that he was having some trouble with his hearing. Now, by all outward appearances a seemingly hale eighty-eight, Ford had dramatically exhibited a clear sign of slippage.
In retrospect, I should have paid more attention to the last lines of the brief speech he’d given just before our encounter.
“I look forward to seeing you next year,” he’d said, a standard line for him. Then he unexpectedly departed from the script.
“I hope to be around,” he added, choking up.
As the audience camouflaged their concerns with hearty applause, the honoree recovered his composure, and his usual optimism. “I do hope to celebrate a ninetieth birthday, so we’ll see you then.”
He was true to his word, attending the next three reunions before infirmity grounded him.
These dinners were one of the more enduring traditions of the Fords’ twilight years. Beginning in the summer of 1983, he and Betty would return to the capital on the first Monday in June. He’d hand out a couple of journalism awards named for him, make a speech at the National Press Club, take a few questions, meet with the trustees of his educational foundation, then host an alumni reunion dinner at the Capitol Hill Club, one of his old haunts from his days in the House.
Unless they were traveling or dead, the murderers’ row of public servants that Ford had assembled in August 1974 always turned out in force: Henry Kissinger, Brent Scowcroft, Dick Cheney, Don Rumsfeld, Alan Greenspan, Bill Simon, Bill Coleman, Carla Hills, Paul O’Neill, and dozens more.
Including aging congressional cronies, former White House staffers, and a smattering of journalists, there were usually 150 to 200 guests on hand to trade insults and reminisce about some of the finest days of their lives.
One year, for instance, Cheney exploited his strategic advantage as toastmaster to needle Don Rumsfeld, his old mentor. “I look at Don now and I see the secretary of defense,” Cheney deadpanned. “He looks at me and sees an assistant to Don Rumsfeld.”
In 2004, he was at it again. “When you’re around,” he told Rumsfeld, “people start seeing me as a softie, all warm and fuzzy.”
There was never any pressure to show up, but these gatherings were a command performance of sorts anyway, a vehicle to recall halcyon days of yore and say hello to the boss. A celebration of decency, one of his former cabinet officers once called them.
O’Neill, who was Ford’s deputy budget director and a particular favorite of the Old Man, explained the emotional imperative this way one year: “Even if it’s hard, you come to see President Ford because of the person he is and what he did for the country.”
Indeed, it’s hard to imagine any other president, no matter how successful, commanding the sort of affection to guarantee that sort of turnout for nearly a quarter-century.
For most of the guests, the dinner was their only glimpse of Ford all year, and he always looked surprisingly hearty and healthy as he circled the room like the seasoned, glad-handing pol he’d always been.
The irrepressible Bob Barrett, his first postpresidential chief of staff, parsed Ford’s longevity this way at one of these gatherings: “He’ll deliver my eulogy, and when my son goes, he’ll [also speak and] say, ‘I knew his father.’”
Despite his reputation as an accident-prone bumbler, Ford had always been a gifted athlete. After leaving the White House, he kept to a robust exercise routine. When skiing became impossible after his knees gave out and had to be replaced, he played tennis and golf regularly.
Early in the new century, however, Ford had been reduced to the status of occasional duffer. Except for a few holes of golf and his swimming, the athletic regimen he’d followed in retirement was now history.
At least he knew his limitations, announcing the end of the Jerry Ford Invitational three years before the last putt was holed.
“I’m not gonna be like my friend Bob Hope and be wheeled around my own golf tournament,” he explained to an old friend.
In a 2002 interview, Ford reminded me that he was the last surviving member of the Warren Commission and the last original member of the Chowder and Marching Society, “so I guess being [still] around, you earn a little recognition.
“I don’t hear as well, I don’t see as well, I don’t play as much golf, but I’m [knocks wood twice] lucky to be around.”
He also noted that his corporate perks weren’t as appetizing any longer.
“Last week, Citigroup had a quarterly board meeting, and they just left the day afterward, all the directors that wanted to go to Japan or China or someplace else, and I said no. We used to jump at a chance like that, but I just told Sandy [Weill] travel like that is just too tough, and he understood. Not being in your own bed—those things affect me now; they never used to.”
I reminded him of the dozens of years when Ford was lucky to sleep in his own bed a hundred nights a year.
“That’s right, and now I enjoy it.”
After the 2002 alumni dinner in Washington, Ford vowed to a friend, “That’s the last speech I’m giving. I can’t do them anymore. It’s become a burden.”
True to form, he soldiered on, speaking a few times a year anyway, with diminishing verbal dexterity.
In November 2002, in a brief phone interview where we discussed presidential commissions, I asked how he was feeling.
“I feel pretty good, but you know, Tom, we’re getting old.” There was a touch of plaintiveness in his voice I’d never sensed before.
His constitution weakened further in May 2003. Ford was playing golf on a day when the desert thermometer reached 90 degrees. He suffered a major bout of dizziness and was rushed to the Eisenhower Medical Center. To prevent a recurrence, Ford thereafter had to wait a few seconds when standing up to give his blood pressure a chance to stabilize.
The 2003 dinner was held at the White House, with President Bush and Vice President Cheney hosting the festivities to commemorate his ninetieth birthday. Even that command performance was opposed by Ford’s medics. “The doctors have been telling him he can’t fly anymore since Philadelphia,” one pal said at the time, referring to the stroke.
He resisted the air ban as long as he could. Many of his closest friends believe that having to give up his peripatetic travel habit was the biggest blow of all. Getting on a plane was like drawing breath, like mother’s milk to him. He always said he was glad to finally stay home more, but none of us believed him. He was an incurable travel junkie; once he couldn’t fly anymore, part of him died forever.
By 2004, he was still swimming laps and managing an occasional few holes of golf. But everything was getting harder, especially travel.
On a hot summer day that year, Ford was walking into the storied Willard Inter-Continental Hotel, where he usually stayed on his return visits to Washington. As he emerged from the revolving door he grabbed the arm of his companion and said: “Stand here for a minute.” It was another dizzy spell, a byproduct of the 2000 stroke and his medicines.
Insiders knew there had been several more fainting spells that never got out.
The 2004 reunion dinner had been moved from its usual slot on the first Monday of June to August 9. That was to commemorate the thirtieth anniversary of Ford becoming president on August 9, 1974. On that Monday, Ford and Herbert Hoover became the only former presidents to live long enough to observe the three-decade milestone of their inaugurations.
To make it a truly memorable occasion for a guy who loved the House of Representatives so much that he often wore a congressional tie when he was vice president and president, the venue was moved to the old House chamber in the Capitol, the scene of so much epic history.
At the outset, it was apparent he wasn’t doing well. He was an incurable mingler, coming early and staying late at these special events to meet and greet his friends. For the first time at one of these dinners, he and Betty were seated during the reception line this night.
Moreover, he looked awful; one of the Ford alumni remarked that he was so pale he appeared positively cadaverous.
When it came time to speak at the end of the evening, Ford needed help from Dick Cheney and Don Rumsfeld, his two chiefs of staff, just to make it to the podium.
They stayed by his side to make sure he didn’t falter. He spoke seven minutes, and lost his place early on. He fumbled and stumbled, groping for words, and it seemed he wouldn’t be able to finish. But he eventually righted himself, and his voice firmed up as he went along, to the relief of all.
As usual, his comments were short, to the point, and from the heart.
“History will judge our success,” he reminded, “but no one can doubt our dedication.”
He paid tribute to “parents who taught me that character and courage are inseparable,” and his family. “I thank God every day,” he said, “for Betty and the kids.”
He signed off by thanking his guests for “sharing the past, savoring the present, and anticipating the future.”
Afterward, he was extremely upset with himself. He told friends he’d let everyone down by what he quaintly called his “underperformance.” He vowed that he’d given his last speech. It was just too hard now, and he didn’t want to embarrass his friends, or himself, any longer.
More than one of the guests observed on the way out of the Capitol that if there was another dinner in 2005, there was no way it would be in Washington. That’s exactly what happened.
But Ford did do another speech. In November of 2004, he attended groundbreaking ceremonies for the new public policy school named for him at his beloved University of Michigan. The day before, a Thursday, he addressed the Wolverine football team to help get them psyched for their Saturday game with Northwestern.
Ford was totally into the moment; he spoke without notes for about twenty-five minutes, calling on several star players by name and bidding them stand up as he summarized their strengths and weaknesses. Then he analyzed the entire season: best game, worst game, the works. It was a virtuoso performance by an aging but enthused jock, and the kids ate it up.
At the Ford school groundbreaking the next morning, he was a different, sadder study. All he had to do was say a few perfunctory words. He lost his place and couldn’t find any words to ad-lib. The awkward pause ran on for about thirty seconds; finally, he mumbled a couple of thank-yous and sat down.
“That’s when I first knew he was losing it,” an old friend remembered, grimacing at the painful memory.
That same month, Ford didn’t show at one of those institutional gatherings he considered especially important to attend: the dedication of Bill Clinton’s presidential library in Little Rock. The weather had been so raw and wet that some of his friends later speculated he might not have survived had he been there.
Another ominous milestone was observed a month later. Ford had been flipping the switch on the Vail Village Christmas tree since the 1970s, but in a cruel emotional blow, the Ford clan celebrated Christmas 2004 in Rancho Mirage, not his beloved Beaver Creek. He never spent another holiday season in the mountains.
In January 2005, Ford tripped on the carpeting in his office study. Unable to break his fall, he slammed headfirst into the side of a door. He had neck injuries, needed several stitches, and was out of commission for weeks. News of his mishap never got out, but the family knew the accident had hastened his decline.
Somehow, improbably, he seemed to get stronger. “I thought this would be the year,” Susan Ford confided to a friend, “but he’s amazed all of us.”
Not all, however. Somehow word leaked that he was frailer than advertised and might be finally in his terminal throes. Suddenly, television producers were calling Rancho Mirage to inquire politely if their telephone contact numbers for family members and Ford staffers were still accurate—just in case, mind you.
“I know why they’re calling,” one of the kids would later grimly recall.
He wasn’t dying, but he was definitely faltering. For years, Ford had been telling me that flying east for the Washington summer reunion and board meetings in New York had extracted an ever-greater toll on him. By now he was doing his corporate work by conference call. As the 2005 reunion dinner date approached, he wasn’t up to it. So for the first time, his foundation trustees decided to go west to honor the Old Man; the dinner would be held in Palm Desert.
It was a useful if imperfect behavioral test; having to spend real money to fly out and honor the Fords separated the hangers-on and wannabes—call-in friends, one Ford associate dubbed them—from those associates and former colleagues who genuinely cared about the guy.
“We’ll follow you wherever we have to follow you,” explained Marty Allen, the esteemed director of the Gerald R. Ford Foundation.
The dinner was at The Lodge, a favorite Ford hotel hangout with a stunning view of the Coachella Valley far below. Dapper in a navy blazer, Ford leaned on a cane and was noticeably frailer than he was at the previous dinner.
“Except for a couple of creaky knees, I’m doing okay,” he told me in the receiving line, where he sat on a stool. “I’m slowing down a little, but I’m hanging in there.”
Cheney was the emcee, mixing genial insults with memories of The Way We Were.
“Every day that I’m in the White House,” he reminisced, “there’s a sight or a memory that makes me think of President Ford.”
After a dessert of his lifetime favorite, butter pecan ice cream, the Ford medal for public service went to Betty Ford for her work at the center named for her.
“Do I get a kiss?” he asked his spouse of fifty-six years.
He did, as well as another tribute: “He’s been my ideal of the perfect mate,” Betty cooed.
Then Ford thanked everyone for “a super, super job” at the White House.
“I know this will surprise many of you,” he concluded. “The truth is, I’m Deep Throat.” The audience roared at the reference to Woodward and Bernstein’s secret Watergate source, whose identity had just been divulged as former FBI official Mark Felt.
The one-liner brought down the house, but couldn’t totally mitigate the sober reality that Ford was failing.
As he himself told an old friend that year in supposed jest, “Boy, this dying’s hard work.”
By year’s end, the medical reports from Rancho Mirage weren’t encouraging. His stamina was waning, his speech halting, his ability to read diminishing. He could function normally for a half hour or so, then had to rest.
Motor skills were a growing problem: he was still signing the occasional autograph for special friends, but some of them arrived with misspelled names and words.
In February 2006, Phil Jones and his wife, Pat, paid Ford a visit in Rancho Mirage. They immediately noticed that the former president was having some difficulty with his language. He’d pause before answering even the simplest questions, and when he did answer after a few seconds’ delay, the wrong words sometimes tumbled out.
Phil was legendary back in Washington for being a pugnacious questioner; frequently Ford had tried to deflect a Jonesian barb by saying, “Now, Phil, we can disagree without being disagreeable.”
It came out a bit differently this day. “Phil,” he wanted to know, “who have you molested recently?”
Toward the end of their chat, Ford decided to autograph a copy of a book he’d recently read for our old Air Force Two seatmate. Unexpectedly, he labored with the inscription, and had particular difficulty crafting a capital P. It came out looking like the J in Jerry, not the P in Phil.
Phil teasingly tried to lighten the awkwardness by suggesting that Ford write something throwaway like “A Ford, not a Lincoln,” which he well knew was one of Ford’s signature lines about himself.
It was a welcome respite from what had once been a rudimentary chore. Ford looked up from his penmanship struggle and grinned: “Pretty good line, wasn’t it?”
Then he scribbled, “To my good friend Phil Jones—Ford, no [sic] a Lincoln.” It may have been the last autograph he ever signed.
After the success of the California reunion, the regulars assumed the venue had been permanently changed and we’d all be invited to an encore dinner in Palm Desert in June 2006. Instead, the invitation noted that the dinner would revert to its historical norm and return to Washington—this time at the National Archives.
More worrisome, the chatty letter of invitation from Ford informed guests that “although Betty and I won’t be physically present that evening, we will be with you in spirit through the magic of modern technology”—a videotaped message.
Many of us wondered what was up; we knew his doctors wouldn’t let him fly, so his not being in Washington was understandable. But he’d had a grand time at the California bash; it had been a genuine tonic for an ailing patriarch. It made no sense to settle on a location that precluded the guest of honor from attending his own dinner. Betty had missed a couple over the years, but he’d never been a no-show before.
In due course the answer emerged: Jack Ford. The president’s second son, a businessman from San Diego, had begun steadily insinuating himself into the operations of the Old Man’s foundation, not for the better in the view of most Friends of Ford. Jack wanted the dinner in Washington—even if it meant cutting out the honoree, who also happened to be his father. The elder Ford really wanted to be there, but if it couldn’t be in the desert, he knew there was no way.
“Jack is alienating all the trustees who loved the Old Man,” one of the president’s closest pals would later complain. “He’s acting like he’s entitled to everything his mother and father had.”
“He really wants to come,” said another irate family friend who heard it from Ford himself, “but the kids want it in D.C. They think it’s easier to raise money there, and there were complaints from some people last year about having to go to California.” Call-in friends, indeed.
So for the first time in twenty-four years, Jerry Ford was AWOL from an event he relished, and not by his own preference.
I remembered what Ford had told me years earlier, kidding-on-the-square: “Jack would like to be a $250,000-a-year park ranger when he grows up.”
The Fords’ absence cast the first-ever real pall on an alumni event that had always been just plain fun. It got worse when the videotaped message of Jerry and Betty was shown. They both looked terrible, programmed and pasty-faced as they read their greetings from cue cards. He was halting and feeble. “Oh my God,” someone blurted out at a nearby table. It was a huge downer; the bonhomie of the dinner never recovered from that depressing visual. Ford himself was also very upset at the way he and his bride looked in the video. But Jack Ford had insisted they cut a tape instead of sending a written message.
In fairness, Ford was so frail by then that he might not have been up to attending that dinner even if it had been in the desert. At the predinner reception, a close Ford friend told Phil Jones that Jerry needed major cardiac surgery—a heart valve was defective and needed to be replaced—but the cardiologists had ruled it out because of his age.
Earlier that day, Jack Ford had presented me with the Ford Prize at the National Press Club. Four days later, a letter arrived from Rancho Mirage in the familiar cream-colored envelope. Ford was congratulating me on the award he’d sprung on me five weeks earlier during our final interview. It was a thoughtful letter, totally unobjectionable to the unobservant eye. In an alarmingly weak hand, it was signed “Gerald R. Ford.”
It had been a very long time, decades for sure, since he’d sent me a missive ending with his formal signature. From the labored penmanship it was obvious it had taken considerable effort to sign his name at all. I was humbled by his generosity of spirit and saddened by its prophetic meaning: Jerry Ford was nearing the end.